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Article: The future of the past.(Potpourri)
- Article from:
- Change
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Literacy has been a mixed blessing to scholars, generating more information than they could digest. While decay and destruction erased historical records, the antlike labor of studious generations rebuilt, multiplied, and restocked knowledge repositories until they overflowed unmanageably.
In ancient Greece, the oral recital of poems, plays, and histories was accompanied by a trade in scrolls and the growth of private and public libraries. "Aristotle ... could have scarcely compiled his works without a considerable reference library," book historian Norma Levarie observes. The great library in Alexandria may have housed a million papyrus scrolls hand-copied by ...